"Get to the Evac Point!" Rogue yelled. She was worried. Almost on the verge of panic. What had they done.

We rushed back the way we had come. We were a thundering herd and lacked organization. Again a dearth of guards allowed us to ascend uncontested, and saved our asses.

The rain was still determined to wash away the sins of the city. As if their would ever be enough water for that.

Upon arriving on the roof, we saw Ronald's team returning from another exit, many yards distant. They were shredded, and had obviously been through the ringer. He didn't seem to have lost anyone and none of them needed emergency treatment. They utilized some hypos to ease their pain and speed up the healing process.

"They were waiting, somebody tipped them off!" His yell carried all the way to us. He was decidedly pissed. That was the voice of a person when everything had gone wrong. His stride was half marching half dragging himself towards us.

We crossed the gap quickly. "Was that your package?!" Rogue demanded, she was no less ready to skin someone.

He threw me a look, shrugged and swung back to Rogue.

"No, ours is set to go off in... " He looked at his watch, "12 minutes. We nestled it snuggly at the bottom of the central elevator shaft." His scowl raked the roof. He didn't know who to trust.

Rogue was thinking, eliminating options. She scanned everyone. Probably thinking about shooting everybody just to be sure she got the traitor.

"We met almost no resistance. Whoever squealed didn't know the whole plan." Rogue sounded like a cat building up a good hiss. "The only people I'm sure it couldn't be are you, me, Morgan, Johnny and the newbies." She lowered her voice, "For all we know one of the suppliers or fixers put it all together and sold us out for a quick Eddie." She really didn't like that idea.

I was looking out over the city. My stare was half admiring and half castigating. I really hated this place.

Just then I spotted a grappling hook catch on the ledge of the roof, a furtive tug secured it in place. If I hadn't already been looking that way I never would have noticed. My suit picked of the sounds of a winch working to bring it's load up.

I pointed it out to Rogue. While raising my rifle to be ready for whoever came up. Let her make the call, she was the star of this mess after all.

"Shit! Contact!" She had her pistol out.

Everyone was ready for whoever was climbing up.

A moment later Morgan's face was staring down all our barrels. He didn't look the slightest bit put out by it.

He did however look like he had gone through the blender, and into the oven. Cut to shit and burnt to fuck. He was moving on willpower alone.

I stepped up to him and starting pouring mana into him. I kept it to a trickle. I also reached into my right side waist hardcase and popped out a syringe filled with a harmless mixture of glycol, saline and some vitamins. I slammed it into him and dumped the contents into his veins. All to cover up what I was really doing.

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Megan... Velma (not Megan) had suggested it a while back as a way to cover up my magic. Terrible source but a great idea. I whipped up a bunch of different cocktails of harmless pick me ups.

I helped him limp over to everyone else. "My mission failed. Package lost." His voice was robotic as if he was held together only by his duty. He came to deliver his report and then he was sure he'd die. Whatever he did, he didn't expect anyone to be able to save him.

Fuck that! I was going to keep this asshole going. I wanted answers.

Plus, I hated to let anyone die if I could help it. It looked very bad on my after action report. Heh.

"What happened?" Rogue got his other arm around her shoulders and kept him upright. She had to get her ear real close to hear him, his voice had dropped so low. My suit let me hear every word.

"Smasher happened. He killed my team and his own when he hit the package with a rocket. Dumbfuck, but he's probably on his way up. We should move." He seemed to shut down.

Smasher that name tickled my brain. Where had I heard it?

I couldn't place it just yet. I dug deeper into Morgan's damaged body, trying to figure out the best way to help him.

His burns were odd, somehow they were not just the product of regular fire. They were much more difficult to treat. There was damage down into the very memory of the cells. I had to rebuild them from scratch.

"Fuck!" I cursed as I started pumping more mana into the dying man.

And then it clicked. I remembered what Sinn said happened here today.

"This is radiation damage." I growled softly, "You were using nukes." I pulled out another syringe and jammed it into Morgan, he didn't respond at all. I acted like I was hitting him with a radiation treatment.

Meanwhile, I was looking for healthy cells with undamaged DNA so I could build him back properly.

Ronald and Rogue turned to look at me. I saw the look they shared. They were wondering if I had just become a liability. Then they stared at Morgan and their tension passed.

"Yeah." That's it, that's all I got. Dicks the both of them.

I couldn't abide when people risked civilians casualties with standard explosives, never mind nukes. They had lost any sympathy from me.

Looking down at Morgan for a second, I thought about stopping.

Couldn't do it, some part of me refused to stop healing the terrorist fuckwad.

I groaned and made my decision, "John, Jim this has turned into a full cluster fuck. I have to heal this asshole and a big nasty fucker is coming. Put him down. Fast and hard."

I turned back to Rogue, "Leave one of the AVs, and get out of here. I can't move much while helping Morgan stay whole. We'll talk again someday." Probably not, bitch.

In fact, you'd better hope I never see any of you ever again. I could already see the bodies of children dying of radiation poisoning.

"Please, don't let him die." Ronald pleaded even as he and his team mounted the closest AV.

Whatever, fuckface.

"Meet me at the Afterlife. I'll settle the bill there." Rogue and her people loaded up into the farthest AV.

Yeah, I'll be seeing you.

The two AVs rose into the dark sky, and quickly vanished into the distance.

Without prying eyes, I opened the flood gates on my mana and shaped the flows of Life Control. I dug into Morgan's cells and started making progress in replacing the damaged DNA.

Making me part of this. I was pissed at the Merc, pissed at the Mana Sink, pissed at myself.

My only real hope was that it wasn't real. That no one would really suffer because of our actions.

Fuck, I was being a hypocritical bastard. I had thought about burning the city down myself. But I didn't actually want to hurt the normal every day folks.

Shit, got to get my head into the game and save this fucking asshole.

I heard my squad get ready.

Heard some commotion.

I turned to look. Part of the rooftop was rising. Some kind of Cargo elevator opened up and out stepped this terrible figure.

If you told me he was a bot, I would have believed you. His body was a boxy frame of metal, barely shaped to look somewhat close to human proportions. Scorch marks covered the frame along with a few dents. Brutal and inhuman.

Adam Smasher. His face looked like flesh, though he had full tech goggle style cybereyes.

He stared at us all, grinning a manic little smirk.

Then he caught sight of John.

He looked pleased.

"Johnny-boy, I thought I killed you already." He laughed, a soul chilling sound.

"What a rare thing to get to kill someone twice!"